It's good, it's bad … it's Bristol

There are very few things during my NASCAR driving career that could match the thrill of running a lap (alone!) at Bristol Motor Speedway. It is without a doubt as intense and as extreme as anything you will do in a race car. And it is fun.

On the flip side, the race itself has the potential of being the least fun you've ever had in a race car.

To illustrate this disparity, you have to understand what it takes to run a lap around the half-mile bullring.

A fast lap around Bristol – about 16 seconds – requires a balance of precision and aggression. It is, as it is at any track, important for drivers to perfectly time their turn-in points and to also hit their markers on corner entry and exit. This requires precision, because the roughly 650-foot straightaways are so brief that you can easily overshoot on both ends.

The aggression comes in the form of accelerating through the middle and off the turns. When done perfectly, you go back to the accelerator as the car compresses into the 30-degree banking, because that's probably the most grip the rear tires will see during the entire lap.

From there, it becomes a matter of the car and driver's tolerance for control that determines whether the accelerator continues to the floor, is released again or some combination of the two through and off of each turn.

Obviously hitting the gas early and with authority translates to more speed, but too much speed can be a problem. Coming out of the turn, the driver has to ask himself, "Do I have enough room relative to the outside wall to stay full throttle or do I need to lift to slow the lateral momentum (which could carry you into the outside wall) and survive the lap allowing for an attempt at another in just 650 feet (or a few seconds)?

This is a rough outline of a typical lap at the world's fastest half-mile track, and I cannot iterate enough how difficult it is. But it's about to get worse.

Add to the equation 42 more cars just like your own, line them side-by-side more than 20 rows deep and the degree of difficulty is multiplied exponentially. Everything I described above still applies, but with congestion comes a whole new load of issues.

For example, the track is narrowed because with a car to your outside or inside you no longer have the same arc into the turns. This means you will need more steering input, more braking, a delay back to the accelerator or a combination of all three.

Sure, the lap times will diminish, which helps, but that's out of necessity, because you're sharing the track with those around you and their every move ultimately helps determine where you can and cannot go on the track.

As anyone who's driven on a crowded highway knows, traffic is always changing, which only adds to the difficulty.

Bristol doesn't allow a bit of breathing room during any laps; even looking in the rearview mirror takes too much time. You must depend heavily on your spotter to decide "am I clear to turn left? Do I maintain my line? Do I surrender it?" And all of this happens at least a thousand times if you're to have any chance of winning a Bristol race.

Taking care of yourself is just one aspect of racing at Bristol. Another is avoiding the carnage. Even if the lap times slow to 17 seconds (and they will) you still suffer greatly from an inability to avoid trouble in front of you – be it a spinning or slowing car – because the track is so small and there is only so much room for 43 cars.

It doesn't matter if you're running first or last, because 30 laps into a green flag run bring the lead cars to the tail end of the field, and then the chain has effectively been connected all the way around the track. In other words, good handling cars are mixed with poor handling cars at a track where a crash taking a few seconds to develop could involve 20 percent of the field.

Some of what I describe here has improved since the track was reconstructed – with the walls being moved back and the surface made more smooth – but it's still 16-second laps. And while it's fun as hell by yourself with four new tires, it's equally as difficult with a full field around you running on tires that are losing grip.

It's Bristol, and as a driver it's why one minute you love it and the next minute you don't.